New York State prosecutors seek 8 years of President Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns. The prosecutors have subpoenaed the records from Trump’s accounting firm. They acted in late August after opening a criminal investigation into the role that the president and his family business had in hush-money payments made before the 2016 election to two women who allegedly had affairs with Trump.
“Congress is supposed to decide how the US spends money. Soon, it won’t be able to.” Writing for The Washington Post’s Outlook, section, TPC’s Gene Steuerle explains that “By 2029, under current law alone, the federal government will take in about $1.2 trillion more, adjusted for inflation, than it did last year. … But about 128 percent of that amount — more than $1.5 trillion — has already been committed by law.”
US tariffs on EU products okay, says World Trade Organization. The WTO, in a ruling to be published in two weeks, will allow the US to impose tariffs on goods imported from the European Union. The US wanted to levy the tariffs in retaliation for EU subsidies to plane manufacturer Airbus.
Meanwhile the EU investigates tax deals between Belgium and 39 multinational companies. The European Commission wants to know whether Belgian tax rulings issued between 2005 and 2014 gave the companies an unfair advantage. Said EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager, “We are concerned that the Belgian 'excess profit' tax system granted substantial tax reductions only to certain multinational companies that would not be available to companies in a comparable situation.”
And Apple and the European Union begin a $14 billion tax fight. Apple will challenge a 2016 EU demand for $14.4 billion in back taxes in the EU’s General Court in Luxembourg today. The company will contest the EU Competition Commission's claim that Apple paid Ireland less tax than it should have due to unfairly advantageous Irish tax rulings.
Will Nebraska see a property tax cut on the ballot in 2020? An advocacy group is collecting signatures to put the question on the ballot. The proposed constitutional amendment would give landowners a state income tax credit equal to 35 percent of their annual property tax bill, and cost the state an estimated $1.5 billion in 2021. That’s nearly a third of the Nebraska’s general fund. State lawmakers would not be able to overturn the amendment in the subsequent legislative session.
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